All gardens bloom beyond seasons and soil. Our green spaces are rooted not only in earth, but in emotion. We like to call these magical places memory gardens, because with every seed we choose to sow, we’re growing the plants that speak to us, the ones we feel drawn to. Maybe it’s the fragrant honeysuckle that used to trail over your grandmother’s fence, or the chamomile that soothes your worries in a hot brew. Whatever you decide to grow, you’re creating a living scrapbook of your life, a memory garden.
Learn how to grow your own memory garden with our grimoire of green-thumbed magic.
Growing a Memory Garden
To garden, to garner up the seasons in a little space, is part of every wise man’s philosophy. To sow the seeds, to watch the tender shoots come out and brave the light and rain, to see the buds lift up their heads, and then to catch one’s breath as the flowers open and display their precious colours, living, breathing jewels, is enough to live for. But there is more than that. A man may choose the feast to spread before his eyes, may sow old memories and see them grow, and feel the answering colours in his heart. This Rose he used to pass on his way to school; it nodded to him over the high red wall, while next to it a Purple Clematis clung, arching over, so that, by standing on his pile of schoolbooks, he could reach the flowers. This patch of Golden Marigolds reminds him of a long border in the garden where he spent his boyhood (they used to grow behind the bee skeps, had a little place to themselves next to the Horseradish and the early Lettuces). There’s a hedge of Lavender full of association, he may remember how he was allowed (or was it set him for a task?) to cut great sheaves of it and take them to the Apple-room, and hang them up to dry over old newspapers. To look at Lavender brings back the curious musty smell of that storeroom, where Apples wintered on long shelves; where the lawnmower stood, and the brooms, and the scythe (to cut the orchard grass), and untidy bundles of bass hung with string and coils of wire.
The Garden Storeroom: A Place of Wonder
What a wonderful place that storeroom was, with the broken door and the rusty lock that creaked as the big key turned to let him in: to reach the latch he had to stand on tiptoe, and to turn the key seemed quite a grown-up task. There was all a garden needs stored in that room. It had been a dining room once, a hundred years ago, a room where the members of a bowling club convivially met and fought old games; bias, twist, jack, all the terms ring in his ears, even the click of the bowls, sharp on the Summer air, comes back; and the plastered ornamental ceiling had sagged and dropped away here and there, showing the laths. There was a big dusty window, across which the twisted arms of a Wisteria stretched, and a broken window seat in it that opened like a box to hold the bowls. Just the hedge of Lavender brings back the picture of the boy whose cherished dreams hung about those four walls; who, having strung his bunches, neatly tied, on wooden pegs along the walls, and spread his papers underneath to catch the falling seeds, sat, book in hand, and travelled into foreign lands with Mungo Park. There, on his left, and facing him as well, shelves lined the walls, and Pears, Apples, and Medlars were arranged in rows, while by his side, placed on the window ledge to catch the sun, were fallen Nectarines, Peaches, and big yellow Plums set to ripen.
What curious things a garden storeroom holds! The tins, slopped over, of weedkiller, of patent plant foods, of fine white sand. The twisted string, crisscrossed upon a peg of wood, covered with whitewash, the string that serves to guide the marker for the tennis court. Then an array of nets to cover Currant bushes, and bid birds beware of Gooseberries, Cherries and ripe Strawberries. A barrow, full of odds and ends, baskets, queer little bags of seeds, a heap of Groundsel gathered for a bird and lying there forgotten. Like a Dutch picture, half in gloom with bright lights on the shears, and along the edge of the scythe, and on the curved wire mesh made to guard young seedlings. Empty seed packets on the floor, bright coloured pictures of the flowers on the outsides, a little soiled by the earth and the gardener’s thumb.
Love, Loss, and Living Flowers
Plant memories, indeed! A man may plant a host of them and never then recapture all his joys. There’s his first love garnishing a rustic arch, a deep yellow Rose, beautiful in the bud—William Allen Richardson: she wore them in her sash. He can laugh now and see the long yellow hair floating in a cloud behind her as she ran, and the twinkling black legs, and the merry pretty face looking down on him from between the leaves of the Apple tree she climbed. He grows that Apple in his orchard now, and toasts her memory when the first ripe fruit of it shines on the dish before him at dessert.
The Clove Carnation with its spice-like scent he bought from a barrow in a London slum, brought with care—wrapped in paper on the rack of the railway carriage—and planted it here. This Picotee he hailed with joy in the flower-market at Saint Malo and carried it across the sea, each bloom tied up to a friendly length of cane. His neighbours marvel at his pains, but it recalls many a happy day to him.
There, in a corner under a nut-tree, is a grass bank thick with Primrose plants—another memory. A picture comes to him from the Primroses very clear, very distinct, a picture of the world gone black, of a day when a boy thought heaven and earth purposeless, cruel; when he ran from a garden to the woods and threw himself on a bank, covered with Primroses, sobbing and weeping till the world was blotted out with his tears, because his dog had died. It had been the first thing he had learnt to love, the first thing he had had to care for, to look after. All his childish ideas were whispered into the big retriever’s silky coat. They had secret understandings, a different language, ideas in common, and the dog’s death was his first hint of death in the world. Years after, when he planted this garden, he gave a place to Don, and planted the Primroses himself. The earth was kindly and the flowers flourished. The earth is kindly, even your cynic knows that and marks the spot where he hopes to lie, and thinks, not sourly, of the Daisies over his head.
The Healing Power of Nature
There is something more than memory in a garden. There is that urgent need man has to be part of growing life. He must have open spaces, he takes health from the sight of a tree in bud, from the sight of a newly ploughed field, from a plant or so in a window-box, a flower in his buttonhole. Men, who by a thousand ties are held at desks in cities, look up and hear a caged thrush sing, and their thoughts fly out to fields and the common wayside flowers, and, for a moment, the offices are filled with the perfume—indescribable—of the open road.
There is that in the hum and business of a garden that makes for peace; the senses are softly stirred even as the heart finds wings. No greeting is as sweet as the drowsy murmur of bees, in garden, lane or open heath. No day so good as that which breaks to song of birds. No sight so happy as the elegant confusion of flower-border still wet and glistening with the morning dew.
I heard a man once deliver a learned lecture on the Persian character, full of history, romance and thoughtful ideas. Towards the end of his discourse I began to feel that he, indeed, knew the Persian inside out, but that I could catch but a fleeting and momentary glimpse of his knowledge. Then, by way of background to an anecdote, he mirrored, with loving care and wealth of detail, Oriental in its imagery and elaboration, the gardens in a palace. There was a stream of clear water running through the garden, and the owner had paved the bed of the stream with exquisite old tiles; white Irises bloomed along the banks, white Roses, growing thickly, dropped scented petals in the stream. I have as good as lived in that garden; I saw it so well, and what little I know of the Persian I know from that description. Omar is more than a dead poet to me now; I can smell the Roses blooming over his grave.
What Every Memory Garden Should Contain
There should be a Sundial in every memory garden to mark the true beginning and the end of day; some noise of water somewhere; bees; good trees to give shade to us and shelter to the birds; a garden-house with proper amount of flower-lore on shelves within; a walk for scent alone, flowers grown perfume-wise; a solitary place, if possible, where should be a nest of owls; a spread of lawn to rest the eyes, no cut beds in it to spoil the symmetry, and at least one border for herbaceous plants. If this is greedy of good things leave out the owls—that’s but a fanciful thought. Do you know what a small space this requires? Those who might be free and yet choose to live in towns might have it all for the price of the rent of the ground their kitchen covers.
The Gypsy-Spirit and the Memory Gardener’s Soul
There are those aching spirits to whom no land is home, whose feet go wandering over the world; gypsy-spirits searching one must suppose for peace of mind in constant new sights. For them the well-ordered garden with its high walls, its neat lawn, its fair carriage-drive, is but a dull prison-house, and even if in the course of their wanderings they stray into such a place their talk is all of other lands; of scarlet twisted flowers in Cashmere; of fields of Arum Lilies near Table Mountain; of the sad-grey Olives and the gorgeous Orange groves of Spain; the Poppy fields of China, or the brightly painted Tulips growing orderly in Holland. We with our ancestral rookery near by, our talk of last year’s nests, or overweening pride in the soft snows of Mrs. Simpkin’s Pinks, seem to these folk like prisoners, who having tamed a mouse proclaim it chief of all the animal world. But ask of the Garden of England and the flowers it affords and see their eyes take on a far-away look as the road calls to them, and hear them at their own lore of roadside flowers, praising and loving Traveller’s Joy, the gilt array of Buttercups, the dusty pink of Ragged Robin, and the like sweet joys the vagabond holds dear. This one can whistle like a blackbird; that one has boiled the roots of Dandelions (Dent de Lion, a charming name) and has been cured by their juices. He knows that if he sees the delicate parachutes of Dandelion, Coltsfoot, or of Thistle-fly when there is not a breath of wind, then there will be rain. They read the skies, hear voices in the wind, take courses from the stars, and know the time of day from flowers. These men, having none of the spirit that inspires your gardener, see the results of the work and smile pleasantly, ask, perhaps, the name of some flower, to please you, know something of soils, praise your Mulberries, and admire your collection of Violas, but soon they are off and away, breathing more freely for leaving the sheltered peace of your well-kept place, and vanish to Spitzbergen or the Chinese desert in search of what their souls crave. We are different; we sit in the cool of the evening, overlooking our sweet-scented borders, gaining joy from the gathering night that paints out the detail of our world, and hope quietly for a soft, gentle rain in the night to stiffen the flowers’ drooping heads. We English are gardeners by nature: perhaps the greyness of our skies accounts for our desire to make our gardens blaze with colours.
We have our memories, our desire for peace, our love of colour, and, at the back of all, something infinitely more grand.
In the end, every garden becomes a memory garden—a quiet chronicle of those we’ve loved, the places we’ve been, and the lives we’ve lived. Its borders are marked not just by hedges but by heartbeats; its blooms echo laughter and loss alike. And as dusk settles over petal and leaf, we find ourselves held gently by the earth’s embrace, reminded that beauty, like memory, is never truly gone—it simply waits to flower again.
Discover how to grow your own memory garden in our beautiful grimoire Garden Magic, blooming with the folkloric history of many magical plants, flowers, herbs, and hedge.
Discover the enchanting history of the world’s most magical plants to nurture your own memory garden with this spellbinding gardening companion.
